Jonas on a Farm in Winter eBook

He accordingly followed Jonas as he drove the oxen
along to the sled. Jonas held up the tongue,
while Josey backed the oxen, so that he could enter
the end of the tongue into the ring attached to the
lower side of the yoke. He then put the iron
pin in, and all was ready.

Jonas drove the oxen along, till he came to the great
gate in the back yard, and then he stopped to go and
get some chains. The chains he fastened to the
stakes, which were in the sides of the sled. Then
he opened the great gate, and the oxen went through;
after which he seated himself upon the sled by the
side of Josey, and so they rode along up into the
woods.

The storm increased, though very slowly. The
road into the woods, which had become well worn, was
now beginning to be covered, here and there, with
little white patches, wherever new snow, driven along
by the wind, found places where it could lodge.
At length, however, they came to the woods; and there
they were sheltered from the wind, and the snow fell
more equally. Josey had found it quite cold riding
in the open ground, for the wind was against them;
but under the shelter of the trees he found it quite
warm and comfortable.

The forest appeared very silent and solitary.
It is true they could hear the moaning of the wind
upon the tops of the trees, but there was no sound
of life, and no motion but that of the fine flakes
descending through the air in a gentle shower.
The whole surface of the ground, and every thing lying
upon it, was covered with the snow; for the branches,
and the stumps, and the stems trimmed up for timber,
and the places where the old snow had been trampled
down by the oxen and by the woodcutters, were now
all whitened over again and concealed.

“Who would think,” said Jonas, “that
there could be any thing alive here?”

“Is there any thing?” said Josey.

“Yes, thousands of animals, all covered up in
the snow,—­mice in the ground, and squirrels
in the hollow logs, and millions of insects, frozen
up in the bark of the dead trees.”

“And they’ll be covered up deeper before
morning,” said Josey.

“Yes,” said Jonas, “and so would
our rafters, if we didn’t get them out.
We could not have found half of them, if we had left
them till after this storm.”

The rafters were lying around upon the old snow, wherever
small trees, from which they had been formed, had
fallen. They could be distinguished very plainly
now, although covered with an inch of snow.

Jonas and Josey immediately went to work, getting
them together, and placing them upon the sled.
When they had been at work in this way for some time,
Jonas said,—­